“Why do Chinese planes keep hovering over Taiwanese skies? The slender young man in round glasses who opens the documentary Taiwan, Forbidden Nation asks questions, as if the threat of invasion still seemed just as unreal. Like the Ukrainian conscripts, his generation could nevertheless one day have to resist, weapon in hand, his belligerent neighbour, who is less and less discreet in his plans for conquest. A painter just out of a brief military service, Lo Yu-han is one of those Taiwanese sketched with talent by Wandrille Lanos, director who fell in love with the island in the China Sea and delivers a long format broadcast this Sunday at 8:55 p.m. on Le Monde en face, the geopolitical program of France 5.
It takes a precise and skilful pencil stroke to sketch in less than an hour and a half the portrait of this nascent nation and avoid caricature. It is the prowess of this documentary which manages at the same time to make speak a great diversity of figures and to recall the construction of this State in lack of recognition. In line with the show’s other productions, the bias is to focus on strong characters rather than commentators. We therefore discover well-known media figures, such as the Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu, but also and above all simple citizens carefully chosen to embody the great archetypes of the country. Point readers will recognize retired Admiral Lee Hsi-min, a whistleblower who tirelessly calls for army reform, the Matsu Islands Coast Guard tasked with fending off Chinese sand dredgers encroaching on the waters. Taiwanese territorials, former special forces Enoch Wu who wants to prepare civilians for the worst-case scenario…
Historical flashbacks recall between these interviews the totally unique trajectory of Taiwan, which has made it fall today into the limbo of the international system. Despite a marked improvement since 2020, misinterpretations remain legion on the island. Many remain prisoners of the Chinese point of view, which makes it a “rebellious province” that an accident of history would have detached from the mainland and which should therefore undergo the same process of “reunification” as other territories cut off from their mother. homeland through colonization or the Cold War.
We will (re)discover it in this documentary: the case of Taiwan actually has nothing to do with those of East Germany or North Korea. It was never part of the People’s Republic of China. Although Chinese-speaking, it is home to identities distinct from those of the mainland Chinese, whether they are the indigenous populations closer to the Polynesians, or even the Han who colonized its west coast between the 17th and 19th centuries. Thus the family of the young painter Lo Yu-han who, although of Hakka culture, an ethnic group from southern China, first feels Taiwanese after several centuries of settlement. As the commentary immediately reminds us, only 5% of Taiwanese today would approve of joining the People’s Republic of China.
Wandrille Lanos does not fall into the opposite pitfall either, which consists in ignoring Taiwan’s links with Chinese history, and the cultural, historical and geopolitical entanglements, strictly inextricable, which make it so difficult to resolve the Taiwan question. A film producer from a family of “Waishengren” (a term for “mainlanders” in Taiwan) introduces the special story of the one million Chinese landed in 1949 with Chiang Kai-shek. The president of the “Republic of China” and of the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party, was then driven out of Beijing by the Chinese Communist Party. Mirroring this, Chen Chu, veteran and champion of the fight for human rights, testifies to the White Terror which saw thousands of activists defending Taiwanese identity executed or imprisoned by the KMT dictatorship until its abolition of martial law in 1988. The officials interviewed also recognize the economic interdependence and the still very important trade links with the continent, despite increasingly hostile military manoeuvres.
This great report ultimately conveys an essential message: it is Taiwanese society that has evolved, consolidated and formed a democratic identity distinct from China. Neither his authorities nor his Western protectors are provoking Xi Jinping with any desire for independence. On the contrary, while awaiting a solution, the Taiwanese and their supporters in Washington are content with the status quo of a phantom country banned from cards and from the United Nations, despite its de facto independence. But whatever fiction the world’s second power forces the international community to indulge in, the spontaneous evolution of the Taiwanese today contradicts China’s plans for “unification”. Hence the fury of Beijing. Perfectly explaining the CCP’s point of view, the Chinese ambassador to France, not content with having caused a scandal with statements on LCI, has also recently issued yet another threatening press release: “It is only when we progress towards reunification that peace can be assured”, warns this text published on May 2. In other words, if the Taiwanese do not want “reunification”, it will be war. But can a people be forbidden to form a nation?
